This Ph. D. thesis has for the object the ethnomusicologic approach of two afro-descendant expressions of the Maranhão (Brazil): tambor de crioula and tambor de mina, realized in honour of São Benedito and voduns, orixás and encantados. The analysis of the musical and choreographic material will be of use as basis to the enlightening of the relations maintained by these two rites with the problems of the construction of the identities (creolisation), the elaboration of a national musical heritage (Brazilian program of the intangible heritage) and of memory of the slaveries (reappropriation of the history and the memory, the liberation of rites formerly forbidden and stigmatized in the past). tambor de crioula and tambor de mina, pluri-identical and polysemous expressions, drawing from an African Bantu and mina jeje-Nagô inheritance, canalizing the identifications and serving as cultural and imaginary referent. However, the process of national intangible heritage is going to infer phenomena of transformation: loss of the symbolic sense and semiotic during the practice outside of the ritual practice, shortening of the duration of musico-choreographic moments, loss of the improvisation, standardization of esthetics (mirror of the identity), loss of the traditional transmission process master / follower. In front of these transformations, the social players bring dynamism, creativity and revival in the musical, vocal and choreographic directories, establishing the personality, the individuality, its expression and its development, in the center of the rites.
Tambor de crioula and tambor de mina, afro-descendant ritualized musical expressions of São Luís do Maranhão (Brazil) : creolity, identity, “counterculture”